Berlin. The murder was ordered by Russian state agencies. Murder and illegal possession of a firearm: Vadim Krasikov, the Russian citizen accused of killing a Georgian exile who had fought alongside Chechen rebels in August 2019, was sentenced to life in prison. According to the judges, it is proven that the cold-blooded murder carried out in the Kleiner Tiergarten in Berlin was committed on the orders of “state structures of Russia”, in a chain of events and connections that had been reconstructed by La Stampa. As reiterated by judge Olas Arnoldi during the reading of the motivation for the sentence, the crime “was prepared with the help of accomplices” already present in the German capital. The judges also recognized the “particular gravity” of the guilt, which according to the German media would almost certainly exclude an early release of the man. The sentence fully accepts the requests of the Federal Attorney General, which had brought the investigation to itself. According to the lawyer of the accused, however, the accusations against Krasikov are not sufficiently proven. The court also substantially confirmed the reconstruction of the dynamics of the crime: the Russian, now 56 years old (who entered Germany with another name, that of Vadim Sokolov), on 23 August two years ago killed the Georgian Zelimkhan Khangoshvili with a Glock 26 equipped silencer while he was on his way to the mosque. Approaching from behind on a bicycle, the killer would have exploded two shots at point blank range hitting the forty-year-old in the back. And when the Georgian was already on the ground, he would fire again by shooting in the back of the head.
“It was an execution, the killer was cold and confident,” said a witness, Eugene D., according to what was reported at the time by the Berliner Zeitung. Khangoshvili died on the spot. A murder in the light of the sun in the Moabit district, a quarter of an hour’s walk from Bellevue Castle, the residence of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, but also an international “spy story”: the German Federal Prosecutor calls into question the men of Gru, the Russian military intelligence service. For his part, the accused from the beginning of the trial denied any connection with the Moscow secret services.
Through his lawyers, he had reported that his name was Vadim Sokolov, that he was 50, and that he was a construction engineer. The Tiergarten case weighed heavily on relations between Berlin and Moscow, so much so that Germany had ordered the expulsion of two Russian diplomats. It was investigative reporters from Spiegel and the Bellingcat site who claimed that the Moscow 007s had played “a central role” in the killing of the former militiaman: in the weeks and months preceding the crime, Krasikov would have had intense contact with members of the «Vympel Group», a formation of special forces under the command of the FSB, the intelligence agency born from the ashes of the KGB, and considered the sister of the so-called “Alpha Group”, specialized in covert operations. Furthermore, the federal prosecutor claims to have evidence to say that the Moscow agents who infiltrated the killer in Germany under a false identity, then helped him to carry out the assassination: a plan worked out in advance, with “at least one accomplice” which would help prepare the crime. As for the victim, it is known that Russia has repeatedly classified him as a “terrorist”, believing that in 2004 he would even participate “in the planning and preparation of the attacks on Beslan and the Moscow metro”. Spiegel reminds us that President Vladimir Putin himself defined Khangoshvili as a “bandit” and a “murderer”.
Today’s ruling has made relations between Germany and Russia even more tense. The first reaction is entrusted to the ambassador to Berlin, Serghei Nechaev: “We consider this verdict a biased and politically motivated decision, which further aggravates the already difficult relations between Russia and Berlin”, then came the more concrete decision: Germany has expelled two Russian diplomats and summoned the Russian ambassador for an interview at the Foreign Ministry.